A Performance Evaluation of Environmental Education Regional Centers: Positioning of Roles and Reflections on Expertise Development

Abstract

Emulating the practice of regional centers for expertise on education for sustainable development, a new type of environmental education (EE) centers with a multi-county jurisdiction was established in Taiwan. Reflections on the functional roles and EE expertise are crucial for these EE regional centers after implementing initiatives while trying to lead environmental educators. The operation team members of these centers and the practitioners and educators from EE institutions, facilities, and venues in Taiwan all participated in this investigation on the roles of these centers and evaluated their performance. Results show that at this initial stage of EE regional center development, the mixed views of center operation teams were averaged into a position close to the mean between a practice-orientated and a strategy-orientated methodology on a spectrum of the center roles. The evaluation results revealed a certain insufficiency in the experiences and expertise in EE of some EE regional centers. As these centers are endowed with a central status by policy to promote and guide regional EE, they need to learn from local grass-root environmental educators as well as other EE regional center personnel to substantiate their expertise, which could be achieved through practical experiences and co-research with local environmental educators.